


Offer Up

by halotolerant



Category: King Arthur (2004)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Anal Gaping, Anal Sex, Filthy, First Kiss, First Time, Fivesome - M/M/M/M/M, Fluff and Smut, Getting Together, Group Sex, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Prostate Massage, Sloppy Seconds, Wet & Messy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 16:38:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6527851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tristan is not in the business of giving Galahad what he wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Offer Up

**Author's Note:**

> **Additional Warnings** : Although the 'orgy' takes place in a semi-public space, at one point one character is watching other characters have sex without them being explicitly aware of it. Also mentions of killing/violence in keeping with the original movie. 
> 
> **Notes** :For **Loshka** , who gave me the wonderful suggestion of: _galahad initiating an orgy with a bunch of roman soldiers in the tavern where tristan is trying to eat_
> 
> Set some time before the events of the movie. 
> 
> There are wonderful fics out there about historically accurate Roman sexual mores - this is not one of them.
> 
>  **ETA 18/04/16** : OMG CHECK OUT [ THE ART](http://loshka.tumblr.com/post/142982200955/i-talked-with-halotolerant-about-galahad) CHECK IT OUT **LOSHKA** IS A WONDERFUL WONDERFUL PERSON AND THIS IS PERRRRRRFECT

From over in the more bustling part of the fort’s courtyard, rising between the clash of bowls and click of dice, and the grumbling and boasting of warriors at rest, comes the loud, raucous cackle of Galahad’s laughter, and then a harsh clatter – he’s standing up, and his kicked his stool over.

 

Tristan, sitting in a quiet, shadowed corner, isn’t close enough to see the boy’s eyes. But he knows that they will still be shining too brightly - fever-sparkling, fierce with all his strangeness.

 

Sipping his ale, Tristan tilts back his head and allows himself the indulgence of a sigh, here in his own patch of darkness where none can see.

 

Not that anyone is looking at him, most especially not Galahad, who has all day – all week, all month, always – made a big show of when he looks at Tristan and when he very purposefully does not.

 

Sometimes this can be amusing. But today was long and cold and bloody – nothing special, and the worse for it, just a grim grind, more ice-cold mud than anything, thought the brief bloody parts stick with barbs in his memory – and Tristan does not have the patience for being loathed or poked at any more at present.

 

Five Woads, Tristan killed today. Warriors, or would-be warriors, or perhaps just people frightened and stirred up and running out of choice.

 

Twenty-three attackers altogether fell upon the patrol when they tried to pass through the valley, and it had been a desperate group, for whatever reason. No time, of course, between attack and reaction, to determine if it had been driven by some particular goal or fear.

 

Such episodes are only growing more common, these past months. Tristan needs to speak to Arthur about that, about what it portends.

 

Across the courtyard, Galahad has now smashed his pottery mug on the ground, shouting something in anger or irritation at whoever it is he’s cornered to talk to now. Tristan looks over despite himself – Dagonet is the one who’s listening and nodding, his hands full with Bors’ youngest whilst Kelda sees to the tables.

 

During the long ride back to the fort in the bitter wind, Galahad had argued with Gawain and Lancelot about the rights and wrongs of killing in the cause of defeat. Which is to say that Galahad had expressed opinions that were more Roman and more Christian in their origin than he would ever likely admit, and Gawain and Lancelot hadn’t bothered to do more than retort idly back at him in response. Galahad likes to speak of good and evil, Tristan has long learned, as though his tunic skirts make him a priest indeed, with some power to pronounce on the rest of them.

 

And Galahad had certainly pronounced then, and loudly, and had kept looking back to where Tristan rode some way behind the little knot of would-be philosophers, as if daring a response.

 

Half the time – most of the time – being the embodiment of Galahad’s distaste amuses Tristan and he feeds it idly with insults and insinuations, but today was too long, too much, one time too many. Despite what Galahad might think, Tristan is not the only man who has ever killed another, and killing well, efficiently, swiftly, is nothing for which anyone of sense should feel ashamed.

 

Oh, Tristan can relish a kill, can find a certain satisfaction in victory at its most absolute, but a killing is like a meal, and may be sour or ill-timed or inadequate or gratuitous or sickening, even as it can be nourishing.

 

And - to extend the comparison - both can be improved or ruined by the company in which they occur, and Galahad is no good for Tristan’s digestion.

 

As they had ridden homewards, Tristan had begun to tense himself more than once to set his heels to his horse’s flanks and speed on to meet Galahad’s words and looks in person, and tell him to close his mouth or let Tristan close it for him, and give them all some peace.

 

But that was what Galahad had wanted, and Tristan is not in the business of giving Galahad what he wants.

 

And Tristan is tired, too, and the blood under his fingernails won’t likely come loose for days. His dead are watching him, as always; he’s feels them, clustered close, waiting for the night to fall so they might begin their long walk down to the cold. Until then they linger with him, him the last thing they saw, the one who stole their heat.

 

He would have disarmed rather than killed them all, if he could have avoided it without losing his own life, but each of them – even the old one, grizzled, worn - had been the very demons with sword and dagger.

 

So perhaps they had been warriors indeed.

 

“At least,” Galahad had been saying as they made their final approach to the fort, too loudly for the words to be for Gawain’s ears alone, “at least I do not go to fight to the death with a smile on my face.”

 

The next time something like that is said, Tristan will not answer for the consequences. He ought to talk to Arthur about that too, about how Galahad and he cannot ride together much longer without…

 

It’s like thunder building beyond distant mountains, whatever this is between them; looming, rising, pressing close, and you know it will break, somehow, sooner or later.

 

On that ride, Tristan had thought that he could beg a bowl of stew from Kelda and take it into his bedroom to eat alone – not usually permitted. That would have kept him and Galahad, and Galahad’s strange wild fury, apart this evening.

 

But then, Galahad might have taken that as an admission of shame, might have curled his lip and smirked in triumph at Tristan’s turned back and strategic retreat, and even the thought of that is enough to set Tristan at risk of breaking his cup too.

 

So now he is sitting in the courtyard, unusually isolated on a corner bench, bowl hugged in his arm as if he were a child again, too near a draft that catches at his throat, indeed warmed mostly by how much in this moment he resents Galahad in every fibre of his being.

 

Eventually, the time will pass, and the others will wear themselves out, and Tristan will be able to retire to his own bed.

 

He is a master in the art of out-waiting. Arthur has joked that he is more patient than a rock; it should be nothing to him to outlast Galahad.

 

Milling round the courtyard, the other knights are recovering from the day’s patrol in routines familiar after years of such evenings. Lancelot and Gawain are at the busy tables near the fire pit, gambling with the soldiers of the fort’s Roman garrison, drinking hard, shouting tales. Bors is making much of his children, admiring the toys they have made or the stories they have to tell of their daily adventures. Arthur is out of sight, and probably praying.

 

Dagonet, meanwhile, has escaped from Galahad’s conversation and is stirring the stewpot for Kelda whilst she is taking a few precious moments to work her distaff.

 

And Galahad? Tristan will not let his eyes search out Galahad, because that would be as foolish as scratching an itching wound or pressing with a sore tongue at a cut in the mouth.

 

What Galahad will do, in the ending of a given day, is always harder to predict than with the rest of the company. Tristan has noted, indeed, that Galahad seems as restless and impossible to please in his choice of leisure as in his ideas of honour. Right now Galahad might be seeking to play at throwing knives, or looking for a partner in arm-wrestling or even about to burst into song. It isn’t the competition that drives him, or not purely, at least as far as Tristan can tell, because – as long as he isn’t in competition with Tristan – he’s a gracious loser when he needs to be.

 

Of course, if he and Tristan do compete, he will behave obnoxiously as a child and crow and preen if he wins, worse than any bird.

 

Some evenings, maybe this evening, Galahad will please himself to coax one of the camp women to him, sit her on his lap and make much of her, but half the time he’ll work the woman up only to throw her off again, apparently losing interest.

 

But not, it would seem, this evening.

 

For Galahad is finally crossing back into Tristan’s carefully neutral line of sight, making his way across the courtyard from where the Samartians and their women sit to where the Roman garrison mostly gather, and apparently this is one of those evenings, rare but not entirely uncommon, when Galahad is in search of… other things entirely.

 

Galahad is so much more than the brash warrior he generally plays, and he shows glimpses of that at times like these, as he walks over the cobbles slowly and in a certain way, a way that would suit a woman, as though his thighs are slippery against each other and his hips weighted.

 

Who knows where Galahad learnt this, or how to want it. And that is probably the least of the mysteries of Galahad’s strange, sharp mind to unpick.

 

Tristan rolls his eyes and takes another gulp of his ale. He has two bites of bread left to wipe out his stew bowl, and he will concentrate on them. He has no wish to see Galahad’s performance.

 

Galahad, who went riding ahead, turning and turning his head and catching Tristan watching, though where else was Tristan to look but forwards?

 

Galahad, who knows above all things when Tristan is watching him.

 

Tristan will think of something else now. Of the exercises he must do before he sleeps tonight to keep his shoulder limber, after all that hard sword work today – the last woad’s blade had been fine work, something ancient and strong. He will think of the need to commission a new saddle for his horse, of oil for his leathers, of training for a new sparrow-hawk he has started to try and charm out of the hills.

 

All important things and worthy of attention, but stray words come Tristan’s way from where Galahad is talking, falling into his ear with all the irritating summons of the one mosquito in the tent at night which can never be caught.

 

The Roman soldiers sitting around the table which Galahad has joined are a group of six and at least two are looking uncertain and nervous enough about the situation in which they have found themselves that they must be raw, newly arrived and full to the brim with legends of the Samartian Knights of Arthur, and their pagan and bloodthirsty ways.

 

Well might they look confused and alarmed when faced with Galahad, who is laughing at something one of the more experienced soldiers - a broad man, beef-fed and red - has said, and then slapping that soldier on the back, all good fellowship, smiling the way he can when he chooses to. He is so easy with the man, in fact, that Tristan can only assume this is one the soldiers with whom Galahad has played out this little dance before.

 

Do these Romans know what Galahad says of them behind their backs? Perhaps they don’t care, in this moment.

 

Though perhaps Galahad thinks differently of that particular soldier, if he has chosen to return to him.

 

Tristan realises he is clenching his jaw.

 

Now Galahad is laughing again, and leaning in to the beefy soldier’s body, whispering something in his ear. The man is half-tense, half-eager, and above all hungry – Tristan can read the lines of him easily, like a stallion scenting mares in a field.

 

Heaving out a breath, Tristan shifts around on his own bench to face away from the group, and sets to with his last piece of bread on the stew bowl. The juice is cold and congealing now, glistening rainbow hues as he turns the bowl in the torchlight. There is a tangle of blood vessel and sinew from the meat caught in the bottom, and Tristan can feel the hunger of the dead rising around him.

 

Today, on the field, his last opponent felled, still seeing the dying, fading eyes, Tristan had turned to see Galahad sticky with red blood, breathing hard, his own sword still in the Woad - a young man, too young - before him. They had all killed, today, and in the name of Rome, a name Galahad would rather use as a curse. To Arthur it is duty to God, above all, and to Lancelot it is what Arthur wants, which might as well be an order from God, and Gawain and Bors are pragmatists, but Galahad?

 

Sometimes Tristan half believes that Galahad, like him, can feel the balance of the living and of the dead press in too closely, the aetheric of the unworldly, warp and weft of their destinies.

 

Sometimes Tristan would like to talk of killing - and of life, of many things - not in an argument, but in an explanation, an exploration, a search for his own self in the eyes of another, like a reflection upon the water.

 

But today, when Galahad had emerged, blinking, from wherever he’d travelled in the moment of the kill, he’d seen Tristan watching him and sneered, his face going into an ugly crumple.

 

_Can’t get enough of the blood for yourself?_

 

Tristan had regarded him steadily, and sighed. _If I am cleaner than you, it is because my sword work is neater than yours._

 

Nettled, Galahad had snarled and looked away, and Tristan had felt the anger rise up like hackles, prickling at his skin, and he had been suddenly furious and weary and too much of one to simply be the other, and had started wishing for his food and his bed, Galahad’s moods and motives too great a mountain to climb.

 

He’s getting too old for games. And he was never young as Galahad is young.

 

Or young as Galahad wishes to be perceived to be.

 

What a tangle. Tristan sighs again, heavily.

 

Tristan still wants his bed, and he will got to it as soon as Galahad has departed the courtyard, which must now happen soon, for Galahad is practically in his beefy soldier’s lap, laughing, playing all pleasing, a lamb’s skin pulled close over the wolf beneath.

 

One of the soldiers Tristan has identified as a newcomer looks disgusted, and gets up to leave - the others roll their eyes, and make no move to follow. Oh, these Romans are all Christian in name, but they don’t all do as Arthur does or deny themselves as Arthur denies.

 

And Galahad, as he is right now, with his curled hair and winning smiles and his fingers nimble, trailing over a shoulder, around a waist - he would be a very difficult denial.

 

“... but I’m _cold_ , there, alone,” Tristan can hear Galahad protesting, flirtatious, his voice rising for a moment above the general murmur around him.

 

Tristan’s eyes look up again, an instinctive reaction to the sound, and he sees Galahad is snaking those cunning fingers round the neck of the next soldier on the bench, despite the one he still sprawls on, and both his victims are smiling at him, simple and greasy and lewd.

 

The second soldier is lankier than his fellow, and roughly handsome in the way of a cheap and crudely-carved statue such as you might purchase at a shrine to pray on. He exchanges a word with his friend, nodding, and then leans in, claiming Galahad’s mouth in an awkwardly balanced kiss whilst the other beams and watches.

 

Galahad has braced his feet on the ground now, and uses the leverage to break free of the lanky one’s mouth, but only moves apply his own lips to the beefy man’s neck, and to allow a hand access under his own tunic in return - it is precisely obvious when his nipple is pinched, Galahad’s face going slack-jawed with yearning.

 

Another of the remaining soldiers leaves the table - taking himself and his mug to the ale casks, shaking his head and yawning - and then another stands also, but he goes to push himself onto the end of the bench next to the man Galahad is astride, and must clear his throat or something similarly cheeky, for the other three all laugh and turn to him, and Galahad tilts his whole body backwards in the arms of his human throne once more and opens his mouth to be kissed again by the new man.

 

Entirely competent seduction, but there’s more there, Tristan can see it even with his sore, tired eyes. Galahad’s need is written across him, but the need isn’t simple, and if it’s desperate, Tristan perceives suddenly, it’s also despairing.

 

“Alright! That’s all the free show I care for!” Kelda has left her spinning and her stewpot, and made her way to the Roman side of the courtyard, hand on her hip. “Galahad, my love, will you please take whatever all this is somewhere half-private?”

 

“Worried we’ll offend, Kelda?” Galahad asks, eyelids drooping, as he gets up from his perch with languid grace.

 

He’s not hard, or not obviously, but his skin is flushed and if his eyes were bright before they shine now, limpid, and his tunic is wide open at the collar and his throat flushed.

 

“Worried you’ll get some kind of awful stain on the benches I spent half the day scrubbing, more like,” she shoots back good-humouredly.

 

“You heard the lady,” Galahad says, turning back and addressing his retinue. “Let us relocate somewhere, oh, somewhere dark and warm, what do you all say?”

 

“Dark and warm and snug, is it?” Beefy asks, and collapses with mirth at his own wit in innuendo. Lanky and Cheeky grin, nothing loathe, and rise to follow.

 

Two soldiers, yes, Tristan has seen Galahad drag two away to his bed other nights before this, but _three_?

 

And then Galahad turns, regarding the last soldier left still sitting at the table, and puts one hand on his hip.

 

“Are you sure you want to sit alone, out here in the cold, when you could be inside with me?” Galahad asks, and with immodest volume and filthy emphasis.

 

Although the last soldier is nervous, flushing a little - he’s one of the newcomers to the fort, no doubt - he gets up, and goes to Galahad’s side, where he’s rewarded with what might be meant as a soothing kiss, but which leaves him trembling rather harder, and visibly harder in other ways as well.

 

Galahad’s smirk is ear to ear, and after a moment he and his four paramours make their way to the small wooden bath house that sits abutting the courtyard wall.

 

Suddenly, Galahad’s head turns and he is looking Tristan dead in the eye, catching him watching not for the first time that day, and half a sneer crosses his face.

 

A shiver runs through Tristan’s body that isn’t cold, and isn’t quite all anger, either.

 

He tries to stand up, and then tries to stop himself.

 

He isn’t in the business of giving Galahad what he wants.

 

And besides, this isn’t – can’t be – what it is that Galahad is wanting or needing, not after today, not after… anything.

 

The last soldier of the entourage follows Galahad into the bath house, pulling the wooden door closed behind him on its latch.

 

Tristan’s fingers are tapping on his empty bowl - he stops them and wipes them on his sleeves, then takes a last gulp of ale and sets his mug down, each movement measured.

 

He has achieved his goal, out-waited his foe; Galahad has retired from the scene, and never mind how or in what company, it is none of Tristan’s business and Tristan, finally free from the risk of judgement, can got to his own bed at last.

 

Tristan stretches out his legs and sighs again.

 

There aren’t any sounds from the baths, not that it’s likely they’d carry this far.

 

Galahad is a loud one, though, Tristan knows that from camps pitched with their tents somehow coming out too close together – hard to understand, since he always intends to give Galahad a wide berth. Whether in company or alone, Galahad makes his pleasure clear and entirely audible. And in the mornings, after, he’ll meet Tristan’s eye dead-on, shameless, secure in his own beauty and the right of the beautiful to be blissful.

 

But Galahad did not look so blissful today, stumbling away from the bloodied field, guilt in his eyes, the same eyes that catch and catch and catch at his own, irritating as a burr, spiked and trying, trying…

 

Tristan stands up.

 

The fort baths are scarcely private, and Galahad and his friends must know to expect some interruptions, but Tristan opens the door with a slow creak and then a loud movement of the latch to make his entrance entirely obvious.

 

Nonetheless it seems not all the group in the small, damp, airless room have heard him, and no wonder, because Galahad is sprawled over one of the high massage benches at one end of the space, beyond the pool, and is stripped naked to his fine, pale skin, and the first of the soldiers, red and beefy and broad in his back and his backside, is already standing between his legs, ploughing into him in the moonlight streaming through the open hatch in the roof.

 

Arranged around them, the other three soldiers are watching, rapt.

 

Tristan feels the low uncoiling of something in his belly, registers the intense wish coursing through him to kill the soldiers immediately, or perhaps slowly, and keeps his face calm, and breathes.

 

It is so terribly hot in the bath house, even though the fires are not lit.

 

The loud, rhythmic grunting permeating the air is from the beefy soldier, in time with a slapping sound as flesh meets flesh. He’s moving easily and Galahad - what Tristan can see of him, which is mostly leg - seems comfortable enough despite the hammering pace, so he must have prepared himself for this. But was it moments ago, here, on the bench, with oil to hand, rough and on display in the moonlight? Or back in his rooms, private, biting his lip and searching?

 

It doesn’t matter, of course.

 

The strange awareness limning at the edges of Tristan’s mind hasn’t changed, exactly, since the cold, bloody field, but here it takes on another echo, and he can feel the vibration of each thrust into Galahad’s body, and see how useless it is for him, how little it meets his need.

 

Because - and Tristan is walking round, along the edges of the room, in the shadows – because when he looks at Galahad’s face it is easy enough for anyone with sense to see that this hard, blunt fucking is not enough. Galahad’s head is thrown back, his eyes squinted up, his body reaching - but there is no answer to his yearning, just the in-out, in-out of the soldier like some habituated servant pounding linen or butter, and Galahad’s cock is barely even standing hard, for all he is open and clearly willing.

 

The sensation creeping over Tristan’s skin is silent and throbbing, something like being in a temple thick with a gloam of wonder and fear, and yet he feels serene as he would in the arc of his sword through air; Galahad is a fool and a pest and Galahad had kept looking at him, and so here he is now in return, gazing back.

 

For the first time in the day, he feels as though he is doing something he ought to be.

 

And when, deliberately, Tristan coughs to draw their attention to him, Galahad’s eyes blaze open, and see him, and burn.

 

And Galahad’s cock starts to thicken, lifting a little off his belly, even as a flush breaks across his chest and up his throat and down over that sweet smooth belly too.

 

And the look in Galahad’s eyes – and Tristan’s chest is bound in iron and he is sweating – the look in Galahad’s eyes is like nothing so much as relief.

 

Tristan stares, and would stare longer, but there are the soldiers to consider, and they are reacting with some perhaps understandable concern to this new companion in their midst, and Beefy – despite being in a state where no man can think quickly – is slowing his thrusts, and Galahad’s eyes close, a wince crossing his face, a needful moan breaking free of his soft red lips, swollen with kissing four men.

 

Tristan waves a hand at all of them, casually. _Carry on._

 

He is not, after all, in the business of giving Galahad what he wants.

 

And even if he were, he is not a man to do anything hastily, and besides he needs to remember how to breathe.

 

Nonetheless, the soldiers are uncertain, looking at each other with concern, until Galahad rolls his eyes with an irritated huff and slaps his hand down on the raw arse of the man shoving into him, and probably does something involving the muscles within himself too, for Beefy stutters, braces and freezes in the brief death of release.

 

Galahad permits this for scant minutes, and then pushes the man away impatiently, and – after a glance, with something like a grin, something like a challenge, bright-eyed, curious, anxious, at Tristan - beckons the next man forward.

 

It is the soldier who came up to Galahad’s group of his own accord, the cheeky one, and it is obvious he has put puzzling over the odd behaviour of his Samartian allies as a priority behind that of achieving a more fleshly goal. He tries a little sweetness to Galahad at first, running a hand over his chest, plucking at his nipples, stroking his cock, but all that earns him is a kick from Galahad’s raised ankle.

 

“Just get in me,” Galahad commands, though he must be at least somewhat sore, and his soldier scrambles to hold himself in place in order that he may slide in and find his own tempo.

 

With the inward thrust, the soldier cries out, loud, as if from the depths of his chest.

 

Tristan arranges himself leaning on a nearby wooden wall bracket – useful, for his legs might not quite be equal to supporting him now - and watches. The swimming awareness surrounding him is gathering and coiling in his belly. It feels like the thunder in the air has come close and imminent, heavy and prickling, and the dead cannot gather round him just for now, too much life in sex, too much power, too much else thrumming into his awareness, golden.

  
Cheeky the soldier may know some more of loving than his predecessor in Galahad’s arse, but not enough to do much better a job of that particular role, Tristan soon deduces. The man probably has lain predominantly with women, and perhaps he pleases them, but although Galahad is bracing and holding himself tense, his hips raised, apparently seeking, he’s still not being given what he ought to be.

Galahad’s cock remains hard, nonetheless, and now and again he glances at Tristan, and there’s pride and arrogance in that look, and then will come a blink and the look will soften and melt a little, less certain, and his mouth will fall open as he pants, his whole body being shaken in a steady beat.

Under Tristan’s gaze – and Tristan cannot quite believe he can hold himself still, that he can keep his hands down at his sides, except that it is driving Galahad to looking at him like this and that is beyond anything – Galahad visibly settles into the rhythm of Cheeky’s thrusts, scarcely captivated but not discomfited, and, having apparently for while given up his urgency, stretches out strong and sleek, all his limbs lengthening, and starts playing with himself.

Something in Tristan’s muscles is a liquid now, and will not hold.

Thank goodness for the bracket. There is a risk of splinters as Tristan’s fingers dig into it where he grips on.

Galahad touches his own chest, and slowly down the sides of his neck and throat, and moves his fingers to pinch and pull at his nipples, something that makes his cock stand higher and darken with each tug and release.

Above him, Cheeky groans, and his hips stutter, missing a beat.

Galahad laughs, not quite kindly, and starts loudly, wetly sucking on his fingers, putting his eyes to meet those of the man sheathed in him, and Cheeky gasps and freezes and dies away in his turn.

He is allowed even less time to recover before Galahad has kicked him away and is beckoning Lanky forward, his grin more relaxed now, confidence growing. He doesn’t look back at Tristan until he has Lanky square between his thighs and is clutching at the Roman’s cock, smearing it with a new application of oil from a small bottle and then positioning it.

Then he looks up, and their gazes meet, and Tristan can see the moment the cockhead breaches and enters, which makes Galahad moans happily before tensing, his cock twitching again.

Lanky’s form is built, it would seem, somewhat more aptly for Galahad’s body - certainly his attentions are doing more for Galahad than what has gone before.

Not that Lanky seems conscious of this, and it is swiftly clear that Galahad does not actually know either how to capitalise on what he has inside him, so near where he needs it, or quite how to angle himself to get what he needs. He is still frowning and twitching his hips, nose wrinkling, making low sounds of complaint barely high enough to hear.

“You,” Tristan says, and steps forward, beckoning the last soldier, the one who was shy, who Galahad had to call to him.

Blushing again, the man – scarcely more than a lad – stumbles forward, looking as though he still isn’t at all sure that these proceedings won’t end in a blood sacrifice, perhaps of himself.

“Come and hold him,” Tristan instructs, and steps closer to the bench where Galahad lies, going to stand midway along one side, beckoning Nervous to stand by the other.

Galahad’s eyes have opened again, and Tristan’s mouth dries out; he’s as close to Galahad as he’s been since they talked on the field.

“Will you let me help you?” Tristan asks, and maybe he could have said that back then, maybe he could have said that weeks and months and years ago.

Galahad swallows, throat working, and holds out his hand.

Tristan takes it; hot and damp with sweat, clutching at him.

“You too,” Tristan tells Nervous, who he gets to mirror his own movements so that soon they’re both holding Galahad at the arm and the hip, and then, together, they lift him up, all whilst Lanky, blind with one purpose, thrusts and thrusts and thrusts, and, under Tristan’s guidance, quite suddenly the effect of that action on Galahad changes.

It’s almost a scream, as Galahad arches and flexes between them.

“We have to talk about your aim,” Tristan says to no one in particular, and grips on tighter, taking most of Galahad’s weight to allow him to buck and strains and go loose-limbed and trembling with it. Galahad is moaning now with every one of Lanky’s thrusts, as finally they hit square on target.

Lanky is panting harder too, and from the looks of things Nervous is coming in his clothing, but Tristan couldn’t care less; Galahad is in his arms, shaking apart, tearing into pieces.

Breaking apart for Tristan, because of Tristan.

And now Galahad is entirely flushed, skin slick with sweat, and his cock is thick on his belly, and smearing him with fluid, and his eyes have almost rolled back.

But when his balls have come up tight enough to burst and his thighs start to tremble, Tristan leans in – unplanned, unthought, desperately necessary – and bites not very gently at his ear to get his attention.

Galahad clouts him in the side of the head, and Tristan’s ears ring. He draws back and finds Galahad snarling once more, but paying almost his full attention to Tristan again, and it’s very concerning how many of Tristan’s immediate problems that solves.

“Do you want to – like this?” Tristan asks softly, in the language of Samartia that only the two of them will understand.

“What are you offering?” The challenge is back in Galahad’s eyes.

And quite suddenly, Tristan doesn’t want to fight at all.

Not any more - not any of it.

“Me,” Tristan says.

And Galahad roars, and moves abruptly, and Tristan sees that he’s reaching down to grip at his own cock, staving off climax, making all of that heaviness wait a little longer.

Wait for Tristan.

Looking back and looking back, waiting for Tristan to catch up.

The movement shifts Galahad in other ways – Nervous falls back, unable to hold on, and the whole group of them sway and falter, and Lanky lets out the loudest grunt yet and convulses, jaw clenched.

It’s stinking in the bath house, hot and sweaty, six men reeking of sex, but only Galahad among them is wholly naked, and Tristan would not have credited that such a man could still command the room, unless that man were Galahad.

Who is now sitting up a little on his bench, not without a slight wince. He’s so incredibly, thoroughly used, Tristan thinks, dripping the spendings of three men, his inner thighs pink and wet, and he transfixes them all with the power of sheer arrogance.

“You may leave now,” Galahad tells his Romans.

Lanky is mazed with pleasure, and Nervous still uncertain, but Beefy grabs them up, and Cheeky too, and starts ushering them out. He’s grinning, and he gives Galahad a parting gesture that is half a salute. It looks… fond.

“You know him,” Tristan says, in the silence, in the emptiness and heat between them now.

“Is that what you want to talk about right now?” Galahad lies back again, spreading his legs yet wider – his hole is stretched loose and so, so messy and Tristan can barely move his fingers fast enough to get his tunic and braccae off.

“I thought it might be so,” Galahad is saying, voice not quite level, and when Tristan looks up from peeling the cloth from his ankle, he sees Galahad is appreciatively studying what rises between Tristan’s legs.

Tristan has always accounted himself a subtle man, no thoughtless beast, but at this moment the fact that erect he is longer and thicker than any of the Romans Galahad has had tonight is far too pleasing.

He steps up between Galahad’s legs and runs his hands – still shaking – down bare, strong legs.

“Earlier, Tristan, I…” Galahad begins, and his voice catches thick, and he has to clear his throat.

“You wanted this?” Tristan asks, more softly than he meant to.

And then, because there can be no returning, no retreat, now anyway. “I wanted this.”

Galahad blinks up at him, licking his lips. Tristan curls in, brings their mouths together. They’re both naked, and he’s just seen Galahad as bare as anyone can be, but the intimacy of the kiss still feels dangerous, new.

The pressure in the air has built and built again, thrumming in the beating of their hearts, in the throb between Tristan’s legs, in the half-caught gasps as their mouths meet, harder and faster. Galahad tastes salty and awful, and his own mouth no better, and Tristan groans and catches himself trying to rut into the bend of Galahad’s thigh, and moves, and just like that, slips into him, easy.

Then the kiss has to break, because Tristan can’t breathe or move or think.

He rests his forehead on Galahad’s - his braids fall forward, enclosing them both, and Galahad whines and shifts, demanding, under him.

It’s so easy, in the end, so simple to thrust and thrust; he gets his arms under Galahad’s arse to lift him properly, just him to bear the weight now but he’s more practiced than those fools of soldiers in finding the pleasure point in a man, and Galahad is almost sobbing under him with each stroke.

Panting, Tristan rears back so he can look down, so he can see that this is true, this is real; Galahad, caught under him, speared open, pliant.

And Galahad’s eyes blink open again, lashes clumped and wet, and there’s the fury and the fire, the defiant strange wildness of him, and Tristan rotates his hips, forcing himself to concentrate, and bites back words it is too late to think are secrets.

A touch at his hand – Galahad, interlinking their fingers.

And then suddenly the grip is punishingly strong, because Galahad is, at last, tensing and spending and climaxing, his whole body shuddering with it, his thick cock spurting between them and his inner muscles rippling where they grip Tristan – storm breaking, rain pouring, relief.

Tristan lasts only seconds longer. It feels like he shoots for an age, and he thinks of his own seed pulsing in and washing out what the Romans left, and tenses again, coughing with the intensity of it, and spills yet more.

When he can breathe – when he can _see_ – he moves off, pulling away and out, and collapses on the bench at Galahad’s side.

Galahad makes a vaguely irritated noise, but moans with relief as he finally brings his thighs back together and rests them down.

They’ve made an almighty mess of the bench, Tristan thinks, looking happily at where Galahad’s own spend covers his abdomen. He hopes Kelda doesn’t have to scrub up in here too – they’ll never hear the end of it.

Wearily, Galahad nudges himself onto his side, and Tristan matches him so that they lie face to face. It’s not easy to see much in the moonlight, but Tristan has long practice at the task of doing so, and indeed in that of looking at Galahad.

He was always looking at Galahad, how could he not have realised?

Galahad takes a breath, as if he’s about to speak, then closes his mouth, eyes darting away.

After the close combat, it can be hard to fall back to life, to reason, to air rather than cloud and mist and the pounding of the blood that silences everything else.

Tristan’s hands aren’t steady yet; he reaches up and pushes a curl behind Galahad’s ear, strokes his furry cheek, thirsts for his lips again.

Galahad’s mouth twitches softly.

Tristan slides his hand down the side of Galahad’s body; gently, so gently, as carefully as he would approach a wild animal he’d charmed into trusting him. He skims over his ribcage, still rising and falling, and across the tender skin of his belly, down and around his hip, and then inwards.

A sleepy, liquid smile breaks over Galahad’s face, and he lifts one knee, making it easier for Tristan to push his fingers between his legs and explore where he’s still so wet and loose, and where he must be sore.

“Mmmmmm,” Galahad says, and nods a little, and so Tristan slips one finger in, then two, and plays with the much-abused little mound inside him some more, rubbing and rubbing until Galahad is almost purring, fluid running from his soft cock in one final spasm at the end, when he bites his lip and lets out a broken little cry.

Interesting, how much Galahad seems to like being pushed to his limits.

More time passes, and Galahad’s eyes open, and he looks to be trying to think again.

“It’s alright if killing makes you want to fuck,” Tristan says, as calmly as he can. “It should. You’re alive.”

For a moment Galahad’s eyes widen, and Tristan wonders if he’s earned another clout or yet something worse, like the breaking of this moment or a misunderstanding that might set them wheeling away and apart again.

Then Galahad sighs, and nestles in like some creature small and unsure, pressing his head into the curve of Tristan’s neck. “It doesn’t take you that way?”

“No. This, tonight, was all about you.”

He can feel the tension that passes over Galahad at the words. Slowly, as carefully conscious, as fearful as a man at a shrine, Tristan raises his hands and with them embraces Galahad, drawing him in close. He lets himself stroke at the short hairs at the nape of Galahad’s neck; the skin shivers at his touch, and he feels as much as hears Galahad’s whisper.

“Can you doubt that for me it was the same?”

Tristan kisses his check. “I find I am revising many of the ideas I had about you.”

“I believe it.” Galahad speaks with a bitter laugh. “I struggle to have any idea of myself, any more.”

“Then let me help you.”

Galahad leans back, looks at him again. He’s tousled and glorious and doubtful and so incredibly, inescapably dear.

Galahad tries a smile again, something true and deep. “Well, if you’re offering.”

 

  
  
  



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